Halloween out in Akihabara

今日の日本語の言葉: okashi (お菓子) - snacks/sweets

This word was brought to you in the spirit of Halloween, and I thought the word "kyandi" might have been a bit too easy.

Today was your average morning. I ate breakfast, took a nice shower, and sat around writing and watching some Korean and Japanese drama. Korean is such a beautiful language too, and I would love to learn that as well, though both Korean and Japanese are such tough languages because of the amount of honorific levels that exist. Even people who have been studying the language for a decade still tell me they have trouble with honorifics (especially Korean ones). So I've got a challenge ahead of me!

I didn't do much writing today because my writing partner was at an exhibition, with her art at an exhibition (and did I mention the piece "Pictures at an Exhibition" by Mussorgsky somewhere in there?). So I was wishing her the best of luck while I spent my time catching up on overdue reading and shows. And since tomorrow morning will be Halloween night for the majority of you, Anna will again not be around, so I expect to go to Gotanda and explore in the morning instead. More on that on the next post (hopefully).

I didn't grab lunch on my way to school, but I did manage to get an onigiri from Lawson's (one of their many convenience store chains). This was a black pepper chicken onigiri, which I thought sounded delicious, but then I tasted it, and I was floored. It's fantastic. If I could send my dad some of this without it perishing, I totally would. It had more black pepper than I had expected, which was totally fine by me, and made it even tastier.

There was no drawing in class today. I was so interested, and thus I participated very much. Plus, when I didn't, I spent time reading manga on my iPhone instead. I think tomorrow I might bring my copy of Tsubasa RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE to school tomorrow and try to work through that instead of reading English fantrans manga (it's in Japanese, so I might as well be doing Japanese things in class, right?).

The content is pretty easy still, grammar wise, but at least my Japanese writing is getting a lot neater and standardized now. I've been writing more Japanese than ever, which is very nice. I also (later) went to a stationery store and got myself a sketchbook, which could also serve to occupy my time in the future. We shall see.

For dinner, I went to get curry with Saya-san. She's that friend from Sweden I mentioned earlier. We were going to go hang around Akihabara a little, and it just coincidentally hit on Halloween (though I didn't expect Akihabara people to celebrate Halloween much at all, so it wouldn't have made a difference).

After dinner, we went into Yodobashi Akiba, which I've mentioned before, and browsed once again through their stationery. I love stationery to no end, and I just don't know why. What is so damn cute about paper with cats on them? Or adorable cat stickers? Or cat pencils? (Getting a theme?).

I'm not sure if I've ranted about just how cool their pens are. They have those multi-color pens, except completely empty, and then you can fill it with whatever colors you want. And they have like, every shade of the rainbow I have ever thought of. They also have mechanical pencil fillings of three different lead sizes, and a stylus filler as well. They've thought of everything. And I so want to make like, ten of them, but they're not that cheap, as you can imagine.

I don't know what these are for, but they're really cute. 

I also browsed through their notebooks and stickers and stuff, looking for something good to mark pages with, and for a sketchbook, because I didn't like all my art being on the front page of my boring textbook (it makes me sad that such fun things are on such a sad place), and I also didn't like it rubbing off when I walked around by brushing against other books.

The pen is the saddest thing I've seen. The caption says:
We were born in the North Pole. Our hometown is disappearing now.
Isn't that just a depressor on such a cute pen?! D:

After we left Yodobashi Akiba, I wanted to go to a cell phone store and look at cute little cell phone charms, and then maybe make a stop by Don Quixote, which is a general items store that sells everything from costumes to snacks to shampoo. Of course, the Japanese sometimes spell it as Don Quijote, and most of the time, they pronounce it like "Donki hote," which I find utterly adorable and hilarious.

Dressed in Halloween colors! Somebody noticed.

Very cool building with blocks that change color.

I found these cats that can connect to your phone by plugging into your headphone jack, and they just sit there, being all adorable. Of course, now that the new iPhone 5 has moved its jack back to the bottom, if I want a cat on my phone, it'll have to be upside-down, which is so weird looking. So I'm sticking with my iPhone 4S, mostly for that reason than anything else.

I would take a picture of the cute cat that I ended up buying as it sits on my phone, but the problem is that my phone is my camera... I'm not ready for that level of inception quite yet. And yes, there is Photobooth on my laptop, but it's currently not capable of running well with more than two apps open at a time (I need to clear up some memory), and thus, with Skype and Chrome open—two very important apps to me—I simply cannot afford a third, even if it's so simple as Photobooth. Whenever I open iTunes to sync my phone, I either have to close down Skype or Chrome, or deal with the slow impossible whirring noise that a computer emits when it is choking on its last breath to tell you that you are a murderous and crazy owner.

I ended up buying the one on the left. 

The following pictures are from Don Quixote, or Donki Hote, whichever you prefer. I'm sure the majority of them do not know that this is a guy who fights windmills, anyways.

We went there because we've never been, and was surprised to find a mini convenience store, a costume shop (though we both knew about that one), a small appliances store, a section dedicated to beauty and nails (of course, what shop in Japan wouldn't be complete without such a section?), and a very nice hat section too (which you can see we had fun with).

Weird snack... But that's Saya!

Pickled plum flavored pocky-like sticks. I'm totally getting
some for Anna.

Freeze dried ice-cream... with the cone. I have never
seen this before in my life.

At the costume section, I was so tempted to get one of these costumes. They are so damn cute. Though I thought about it, and I wondered what the hell I would ever do with one except walk around Harvard and get known as the one with that weird costume? Nothing else. Zannen desu ne.

There was also the hat section, at which point I got in touch with my inner Japanese classic lady self, and my western zodiac self as well. And... my sweet tooth self? That part doesn't exist as such a big personality as the other two seem to do in my life.

This is a duster. Would you dust with something this cute?!

I also ended up trying some big glasses, to see what the big glasses fad was all about. I must say, I now understand. I'm not sure what I understand, but I understand. It's a... feeling. That's all I can say. You definitely don't feel smarter, but you feel like you can act smarter, and that's all that counts.

When we were in the costume area, there was also this one cute guy that kept running into us on various floors. He was always polite, flashed us a sweet smile, then apologized for being in the way and stepped aside. What a gentleman! And it was an added bonus that this guy was wearing a whole three piece suit, tailcoat and all. Swoon~!

Yes, that is actual alcohol, I think. How... odd.

Below is a picture of the traditional view of Akihabara, which I finally managed to get a picture of. It's on the other side of the station from where I usually get out, so I usually am too tired to come here at night to grab a picture of this place. But isn't it pretty? Sometime I'd like to head to Shibuya at nighttime too to see that famous crossing with all the lights. It's cool during the day, but during the night, it's just awesome, ne? Maybe I might do that tomorrow or Friday. Then again, if I'm gonna explore Gotanda tomorrow, I don't think I'll feel like being out both before and after school.

Hatsune Miku! Someone actually dressed up! 

When I got back home, there was a nice slice of banana pie waiting for me. I was hesitant to eat it, because of the whipped cream (and the fact that pies usually are too sweet for me already when they're made out of apples; what happens when they're made out of bananas?!). But I tried it, and yes, it was too sweet. But I ate through half of it before giving up because any more and I might have gotten sick. It wasn't bad though. For something advertised as banana pie, it's actually quite delicious. It's just that I'm the wrong audience for it. Nothing wrong with the cooking itself, which was fantastic as always.

I've got a test tomorrow that I'm a bit apprehensive about, though only a bit. It's only covering the past five days of studying, which is already a fifth of the way through our new textbook. At this rate, I'm going to have about ten textbooks before I return to the states. I'm glad we're moving faster than I expected though. Though, as always, I wished we moved faster.

So now I'm off to get some rest. I might study for the test tomorrow morning, but those of you who know me well have probably figured out that when I don't study is when I do the best. If I do study, then I tend to overstudy and push out the bigger picture with tiny details. Who knows?

Mata ashita!
マギー